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There are words most often associated with the teaching of Christ in the Gospel. These words have a special power to attract that defies explanation. For example … “love your enemy”.
The Gospel of Luke contains a strong endorsement of a ministry of liberation (4:14-21). And, throughout the Gospel, Luke sets Jesus off on a journey to Jerusalem, spreading the Good News of Liberation in word, in relationship, and in action.
It is helpful to compare Luke’s rendering of these words of Jesus with the same passage from the Gospel of Matthew. It appears that both authors had access to a source document containing the sayings of Jesus (this passage is not found in Mark), and both chose to elaborate the message to meet their own ends. In comparison to Luke, Matthew practically “glosses over” the “love you enemy” section. Luke, on the other hand, elaborates it: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Then Luke, a few verses later, unlike Matthew, repeats, “Love your enemies.” Love of enemies, then, is an important step in Luke's understanding of the ministry of Liberation.
The enemy of the oppressed is the oppressor. Oppressors come in many forms: the minority of the rich and powerful that keep the majority in poverty and misery; the paternalistic structures of the Church that stifle creativity and change; the profiteers from rampant commercialism; the agents of prejudice in all its forms. But there are more intimate oppressors that we sometimes overlook: those parts of our personality that maintain denial and keep our lives in a pattern of self-destruction; the need to control the thoughts, actions and behaviors of others, particularly those closest to us; the uncritical acceptance of myths and beliefs that create an environment of hopelessness.
Whether the oppressor is active outside of ourselves or intimately part of ourselves, the call of Jesus in Luke is to love.
To love the oppressor is to refocus power so that their hold on society or on our lives is transformed. To love the oppressor is first of all an act of self-liberation. Secondly, it opens the possibility of liberating the oppressor from the ignorance and evil that maintains them in their positions of dominance.
To hate the enemy yields only a harvest of bitterness and deception. Love, on the other hand produces “a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing which will be poured into our laps.”
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